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Weston Mount Dennis residents will have input into Crosstown LRT storage site

Metrolinx has agreed to open debate on the fate of the former Kodak manufacturing site just months before the provincial agency tenders a multibillion-dollar contract to build a storage facility for the Crosstown LRT there.

It’s a major turnaround for Metrolinx, which has previously resisted requests by community activists to intensify development on the 23-hectare brownfield at Eglinton Ave. W. and Black Creek Dr., and include multi-storey commercial buildings that could lead to local jobs.

“The fact that they put in this huge facility has a devastating kind of impact. Kodak used to be one of the major suppliers in York. They provided around 3,000 jobs,” said local councillor Frank Di Giorgio. “Now all of a sudden you get a huge maintenance facility there and maybe 500 jobs.

“The reality is they’re going to be skilled jobs that most of the local people in that low-income area are not going to be able to get.”

The maintenance and storage site will be operated by a private company.

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The move came after the city’s executive committee passed a motion last month asking the transit agency to allow public consultation. The province was eliminating people from the planning process, said Di Giorgio.

A community working group will have input into how the site can accommodate other uses, said Metrolinx spokesman Jamie Robinson.

The storage facility is designed to accommodate 168 vehicles, but Di Giorgio said the transit agency won’t need that many until it extends the Crosstown west to the airport, a plan that might not be executed for 30 or 40 years.

Resident groups have long wanted the lands to be intensified to attract more economic opportunities, which will be lost if Metrolinx uses it for a single purpose.

“We feel that the area for rail storage will go unused and the maintenance barns will be underused,” said Rick Ciccarelli, who chairs the Kodak lands committee of the Mount Dennis Weston Network community group.

“This is, in the eyes of our community, Metrolinx planners speculating on a distant future while leaving employment lands sterile of jobs beside a priority neighbourhood that has experienced high unemployment since the closure of Kodak.”

The line’s mostly one-storey stand-alone stations, included in the huge contract, are also controversial.

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“The city has issues with how Metrolinx is proceeding along Eglinton,” said Councillor Peter Milczyn. “We’d like them to be more mindful of development and intensification opportunities, not simply build little one-storey station pavilion buildings. So that’s an ongoing discussion.”

Robinson said Metrolinx is working with potential developments to integrate the stations where possible.

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